The Contender debuted on NBC on March 7, 2005. This article is part of a monthly series throughout 2025 — the 20th anniversary year — catching up with or reflecting on alumni of the show.

If you haven’t watched “The Contender” in the 20 years since it aired, you’ve probably forgotten most of the details of Anthony Bonsante’s run on the show. Who he defeated, who defeated him, who he beefed with in the loft, what funny one-liners he got off — most of that is a blur.

But there’s one thing about Bonsante that every viewer remembers. One item of clothing specifically. It’s Bonsante’s version of the Michael Scott “World’s Best Boss” mug: his “#1 Daddy” hat.

The ballcap was dirty and broken in, a smudged-up white hat with red and blue lettering, and as far as inanimate objects go, it was the biggest star of the first season of The Contender.

In 2004 when the NBC reality show was taped, “#1 Daddy” was how Bonsante, then 33, thought of himself.

In 2025, it’s time for an updated version. Bonsante, now 54, is ready for a “#1 Granddaddy” hat.

“I’m on my way right now to see my grandkids for one of their birthdays,” Bonsante told me from behind the wheel in his native Minnesota last weekend. “If you remember, I was the oldest one on the show. Now, I’m a member of AARP. Now I’ve got a 32-year-old daughter and a 28-year-old son and I’ve got five grandkids.”

Bonsante is definitely No. 1 when it comes to regularity in becoming a granddaddy, as he is a grandfather to kids aged 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1.

But somehow, he hasn’t bought, or been gifted, a “#1 Granddaddy hat” yet.

“That’s a good idea, though,” he said with a laugh. “I should probably get one of those.”

After the show aired, Bonsante’s manager made a run of replica hats that they sold to the public (6 million viewers per week wasn’t quite what NBC was hoping for, but it’s plenty for a sudden minor celebrity looking to make a few extra bucks merchandising), but the real-deal original hat now belongs to Bonsante’s son Derek. On Derek’s 21st birthday, Anthony bought him his first legal shot of tequila, and the empty Don Julio bottle now sits in Derek’s house, with the “#1 Daddy” hat resting atop it.

Probably the most memorable thing about Bonsante’s time on the show other than that hat was the way he became the embodiment of a reality-TV trope: the “villain” who “isn’t here to make friends.”

He actually said those exact words into the confessional camera when he pulled what was depicted as the betrayal of the season. The East and West teams had decided who would fight whom in the opening round, and Bonsante was supposed to match up against Jimmy Lange. “The Bullet” had other ideas, though, and when it came time to make his selection, he took aim at Brent Cooper — generally agreed to be the safest choice on the East squad — pissing off Lange and several of Bonsante’s fellow West fighters.

“We had 16 guys in there, and every one of them was a drama queen,” Bonsante recalled. “They all wanted to be friends, and I’m like, ‘Guys, why do we want to be friends with each other? I’m gonna have to kick your ass in two weeks to try to win a million dollars. I don’t like any of you people.’”

As far as the blindside of choosing Cooper instead of Lange, Bonsante remembers it differently than how it was portrayed on TV.

“When I first got there, we mapped it all out that I was gonna get Brent Cooper,” he claimed. “And then these mother-effers started watching me train, and said, ‘Oh, he’s a little better than we thought he was gonna be. He’s gonna take Jimmy Lange.’ I’m like, ‘I’m gonna take who the hell I want. None of you people get to choose who I pick.’ And everybody on the West knew who I was gonna pick, but the show made them act like it was a surprise.”

The swerve paid off for Bonsante, who scored a dominant third-round stoppage of Cooper.

In his quarterfinal match against Jesse Brinkley, Bonsante was again having success — right up until the moment he wasn’t. He appeared to be leading through four rounds of a scheduled five (the scorecards were never made public, but Bonsante says he was told later that he could have lost the fifth round and still won the fight), only to get caught with a Brinkley right uppercut that rocked him and a second one that put him on his back. He beat the count but, bleeding from the nose and mouth and visibly dazed, Bonsante absorbed more flush shots until referee James Jen Kin stopped it with 36 seconds left on the clock.

“I was whooping Jesse Brinkley’s ass in that semifinal fight,” Bonsante recalled, “and then Jeremy Williams, who was paid by the TV show to coach the West team, told me I had to win the fifth round. Jeremy Williams lost that fight for me. I mean, Sugar Ray Leonard comes up afterward and says, ‘Tony, what the hell were you doing?’ I said I was doing what the trainer told me to do — the trainer you guys hired.

“They wanted action. They don’t want somebody to take the fifth round off and do nothing and win a decision.”

It was a tough ending to watch for Bonsante fans — especially his two kids, who were seated at ringside, tears streaming down their faces as their dad got stopped. Daughter Brittany seemed particularly distraught, but Bonsante insisted it wasn’t because she was scared for her father or rattled by watching him take punches.

“My kids were at most of my fights before and after The Contender,” Bonsante said. “When I boxed, they wanted to be there. My kids are tough as nails.

“But my daughter was upset because she knew damn well I had the fight won! She was probably thinking, ‘Dad, why the hell are you fighting with this guy right now? Get away from him.’ She probably knew more about boxing than Jeremy Williams did. I should have had my daughter in the corner. She would have helped me more.”

Bonsante came into the show as one of the most experienced fighters in the cast, with a record of 25-4-3 that included a 2003 TKO win over former phenom Tony Ayala Jnr and a 2004 decision loss to his soon-to-be castmate Peter Manfredo Jnr. He says he wasn’t the most skilled boxer to try out for The Contender, but he knows exactly why they cast him.

“I shined in the interview process,” he said. “I told them I was a single dad raising two kids, working [the overnight] shift as a shift supervisor, and they hopped on the story and that’s how I got on the show.”

Bonsante is plenty opinionated about all things Contender. He insists without hesitation that his season was the best of the five that eventually aired. (No arguments here.) He called his castmates “dumbasses” for voting Manfredo back onto the show after he’d been eliminated. He said if he’d beaten Brinkley, in the next round of the tournament he would have “piss-pounded Sergio Mora because he’s tall and lanky, and I’d have just pinned him in a corner and roughed him up.”

He also offers a different viewpoint on Sylvester Stallone than what several of the Season One alums I’ve interviewed have said.

“When the cameras were rolling, Sly was a prick and Sugar Ray was awesome,” Bonsante said — echoing, so far, what a few other fighters have told me. “But, I got called into the office one day with Sly, just to bullshit and talk and because he knew I liked beer and cigars. Sly is a huge cigar guy. So he invited me in, and we smoked a big fat dog rocket and drank a Heineken. And I said, ‘Can I ask you a question? In front of the guys and the cameras, you’re just a prick sometimes. Why?’ He said, ‘Tony, I’m sorry. My manager tells me to do that to get certain roles.’ Which totally made sense — because he always plays a badass, right? But behind closed doors, one on one, and when the show was over and the tapings were all done, Sly was down to earth, a fantastic family man.”

Bonsante had his ups and downs as a fighter after his reality-TV run ended.

He lost three straight under The Contender’s promotional banner, dropping a five-round decision to Ishe Smith on the live finale card, a close five-round decision to Brinkley in a rematch, and then a fifth-round stoppage at the hands of undefeated title contender Allan Green.

Bonsante bounced back with meaningful hometown wins over fellow locals Troy Lowry and Matt Vanda, both at the Target Center in Minneapolis.

He lost a technical decision to John Duddy at Madison Square Garden, and suffered a bizarre first-round stoppage loss to future light heavyweight champ Adonis Stevenson when he appeared to be playing possum on the canvas and the ref assumed, incorrectly, that he was out cold.

Bonsante fought a few more times, didn’t box for three-and-a-half years between 2010 and 2014, then came back with a couple of wins, and finally lost by disqualification to Yory Boy Campas in 2016 at age 45, bringing his record to 34-13-3 (18 KOs). Bonsante felt Campas faked an ankle injury to get the win, but regardless, he had to assess his own performance honestly.

“The punches were coming, and I wasn't seeing them fast enough to get out of the way. My reflexes were not there anymore,” he said. “I’m like, I’m taking way more shots than I need to be. My kids don’t want me to do it anymore. And it’s like, you know what, if you’re truly the no. 1 dad, don’t do it anymore. Stop for your kids. So I stopped.

“You know, I used to have the motto, you take one to give five. Well, Christ, when you’re 45 years old, and you’re taking five to give one, I don’t need that.”

The latter stages of Bonsante’s boxing career were accompanied by some highs and lows in his personal life as well. As a single dad on a network show with a substantial female viewership, he said after The Contender aired he “got letters from women all over the country — I even got marriage proposals.” But instead he got back together with his ex-wife and the mother of his kids, Tawnya. They nearly got remarried in 2010, but didn’t quite make it back to the altar before splitting up again.

He did get married again a few later, but that one lasted just two years before Bonsante went through another divorce.

Now Bonsante is in a long-term relationship with his girlfriend Tess, who has a 12-year-old daughter (making Bonsante something of a “#1 Daddy” again). And he sounds like a man who’s not expecting to go through any more breakups.

“As you get older, you figure out what true love really is,” he said. “It took me until I was about 50 to figure it out. I want to be with her because she makes me a better person. I have never wanted to become a better man for anybody else before. Now I want to be better for myself and for her.”

Bonsante isn’t entirely done with boxing — he trains amateurs at the Takedown Gym in Brainerd, Minnesota. But to pay the bills, Bonsante works full-time for the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

“I plow the state highways, I put up signs, I fix the roads,” he said. “I like the job, it keeps me active. I’m just a blue-collar guy, you know? I can’t sit behind a desk. And I only put a suit on if I have to go to a funeral.”

As the conversation continued, Bonsante became even more blunt in describing himself.

“I’m a redneck from Minnesota. I drink beer, I shoot guns, I go hunting — you know, it’s what I do. And I don’t pull any punches. I’ll tell the whole truth, and I’ll throw a couple F-bombs in there. It’s who I am, how I am.

“Over time, my circle has gotten smaller, but the people in my circle are the people I want. My circle knows who I am. And I try my best not to say the dumb shit in front of people that I know can’t take it. Some people can take it, some people can’t.”

Some things never change. Twenty years later, Anthony Bonsante still isn’t here to make friends.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.